Tag: kitesurfing

Some of my favorite memories are from long distance kitesurfing trips on the northern coast of Brazil. I’ve done several trips there with SurfinSemFim and I’ll be returning December 10-16, 2017 to lead my favorite trip of all: from kite mecca in Preá through the amazing Parnaiba Delta to Atins, a magical village with great kiting on the edge of the incredible Lençois Maranhenses national park.

The Delta trip covers 350km over 7 days and 6 nights, traveling entirely on the water — truly a long distance kitesurfing journey, departing and arriving each day directly from beautiful small hotels and posadas along the way.

We’ll meet on December 10 at the beautiful and unique Rancho do Peixe in Preá, just a few hours by car from the airport in Fortaleza. I recommend coming in a day or two early if possible to relax at Rancho and warm up with a few short downwinders around the point to the legendary town of Jericoacoara.

As we make our way down the coast we’ll have top-notch land support from SurfinSemFim and coaching on the water from myself and Evan Netsch, top rider and rep for Cabrinha kites.

On Dec 11 we’ll leave Preá and spend the next several days making our way down the coast of three different Brazilian states: Ceará, Piauí and Maranhão, stopping for nights in Camocim, Barra Grande, Ilha dos Poldros, Tutóia, and then finally in Atins. This itinerary gives you exposure to a hugely varied landscape — from dunes and lagoons to the mangroves and rivers of the Parnaiba delta all the way to the beginning of the incredible Lençois Maranhenses. If time permits, I recommend extending your trip for a few days at the end to explore Atins and the Lençois. These places are hard to get to, truly off the beaten path, and very very worth spending some extra time in!

Incredible Ilha dos Poldros in the Parnaiba delta

We’ll cover distances of up to 70km on some days of this trip. This multi-day, long distance journey is suitable for experienced kitesurfers with some downwind experience and in good physical condition. Travelers on this itinerary usually fly into Fortaleza (FOR) and out of Sāo Luís (SLZ) airport. It is possible to get back to Fortaleza by land from Atins, but it takes a long time. We can help with airports transfers and any other travel details.

Downwind with SurfinSemFim

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Soon after we released the SurfinSemFim kitesurfing documentary about long distance kiting in Brazil, I was interviewed on the fantastic Here Be Dragons kitesurfing podcast. On his show, Bjoern digs up the details on some of the most interesting kite destinations around the world, and I’ve learned a lot listening to his episodes about South Africa and Chile, just to name a couple of them.

He asked me to be on the show to talk about my long-distancekitesurfing experiences in Brazil with Surfin Sem Fim. We did a trans-Atlantic simul-cast and worked our way through the 600km itinerary that we captured in the film, talking about the landscape, the spots, the kiting, and the immersive experience of traveling by kite day-after-day down the coast of Brazil.

Soon after we released the SurfinSemFim kitesurfing documentary about long distance kiting in Brazil, I was interviewed on Adventure Sports Podcast, a unique show that focuses on all sorts of adventure sports. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my experiences and spread the word about adventure kiting!

Starting with the beginner questions about what kitesurfing is and how it works, at about 44:30 we move on to talk about my longdistance kitesurfing experience in Brazil and also about the deep connection between athletics and intuition and how being active in nature – especially over the course of a long athletic journey – can be a powerful way to train your intuition.

Early last year my friend Marco mentioned an idea, a project that he was working on. Not ‘just an idea’ as we often say but an awesome idea, and I said yes!, let’s do it, I would love to be part of it if it happens.

I went into training mode – some flying, running, swimming in the Bay and kiting in Cape Town, the Philippines, Micronesia, Baja, and California – and a few months later I found myself in Taiba, Brazil getting ready to kite 600km down the coast with a small film crew to capture the experience.

This sort of athletic journey is my favorite way to travel, and it was an incredible opportunity and a privilege to be one of the six professional athletes that formed the team. I was the only American and the only non-Brazilian on the team, which made for an additional challenge on top of the long days on the water. The other riders were Guilly Brandão, Andre Cintra, Marco Dalpozzo, Andre Penna, and Marcela Witt — a diverse crew of world-class riders, all game for some long distance adventure!

After nearly a year of post-production the resulting film was released in Brazil by Canal OFF and I am now able to share it here with you.

An intense athletic journey is one of the best ways to bring out the connection between athletics and intuition, and making this film was a transformative experience for me. Not only was this my first pro athlete gig but I was also working in a new foreign language (Portuguese). At first it was hard to find my footing but once I got my board under my feet and my kite in the air I felt right at home. I’m very proud of the result and very happy that the film captures the feeling of this incredible part of the world, and of the long distance experience.

A new specialty in kitesurfing is emerging. Long distance kiting is different from freestyle, wave riding, racing and free riding. While all of these disciplines continue to progress, something else is happening that isn’t about tricks, waves, or competition – it’s about exploration, adventure, and the unique feeling of making a journey by kite.

Long distance kiting is about traveling not just with your kite but traveling by kite. There are parallels in other sports: in paragliding it’s known as vol-biv, in cycling it’s bike-packing. It’s the difference between sport climbing and a multi-day climbing expedition, or between a day hike and an overnight backpacking trip.

Coming around the corner to Jericoacoara

Long distance kitesurfing can be done with just about any equipment, at any pace, in many places, and with varying degrees of support. Long distance kiting is its own thing, and for many of us it is the way that we enjoy the sport the most. Especially for riders who aren’t into freestyle or racing, and for more experienced and adventurous riders, long distance is a uniquely awesome experience and more and more kitesurfers around the world are getting stoked on long distance kiting.

It’s not just “downwind”

If you’ve been kiting for more than a year you’ve probably done a “downwinder” of some sort, either at your home spot or while on a kite trip somewhere. Usually this involves riding a few miles/km from a known launch and getting a ride back to where you started from. I did my first short downwinders at Ocean Beach in San Francisco and on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It’s a great feeling to ride with the wind and know that you don’t have to worry about getting back upwind – just jump in the car/buggy/taxi/bus, and enjoy the ride back home!

These little downwinders are super fun, but I always wanted more. I wanted to go somewhere. What’s different about long-distance kiting is that you leave from wherever you start, and you don’t go back. You kite down the coast some distance, you arrive somewhere else, sleep there, and then continue again the next day. While we often use vehicles for gear support and/or safety, it is possible to travel this way without getting into a vehicle for days, even weeks at a time. The detachment from the world of roads and vehicles and the immersion in the journey creates a totally different feeling.

Variations within long-distance kiting include supported, unsupported, solo, crossings, distance records, and exploration, just to name a few. All of these areas are seeing rapid development, and I think we will see more and more in the coming years. There is still a ton of unexplored territory and many “firsts” yet to be achieved in long-distance kiting. For inspiration check out Louis Tapper’s original 2000km solo trip, the solo longdistance trips that Andre Penna is doing on his foil in Brazil, the mega-distance records that athletes like Nick Levi are putting up, the multiple world records set by the amazing Bridge family at the Isle of Wight, or the 600km “Ironman” trip” that I did last year.

Logistics

The most common type of long distance kitesurfing is done with the support of vehicles that travel along the route by land, carrying all of your regular-life stuff (most of which you quickly realize you don’t really need at all). It’s not usually necessary, but in certain conditions a boat or PWC is needed for on-the-water support. On the other hand, given the right conditions (first of all: warm air and warm water) long distance kiting can be done entirely unsupported, with just a waterproof backpack and some cash in your board shorts.

The north-east coast of Brazil is particularly well-suited for long distance kitesurfing, with hundreds of miles of sandy beaches, side-onshore trade winds, warm water, warm air, great food, great culture, and an absolutely incredible landscape – but there are many other places around the world where distance trips can be done, most of them undeveloped. Where? That’s part of what’s so cool about long-distance – most of it remains to be discovered!

Long distance equipment

Equipment

Although some specialized gear is starting to emerge, long distance kiting can be done with just about any equipment. You can go long-distance on light wind race gear, wave kites and a surfboard, a twin tip – or perhaps best of all: a foil board.

When you select gear for a long-distance trip, the most important consideration is your skill and level of confidence with your gear. Choose gear that you have mastered – you want to be sure that you can make it work if the wind drops or if you need to go make landfall somewhere other than your planned destination. We’ll go over equipment in more detail in another article, but if you are doing a long distance trip in a warm place like Brazil, you really don’t need much beyond your board and your kite.

You also need to select equipment that is going to work well in the terrain and conditions that you’ll be riding in. My board preference is a strapless surfboard with relatively high volume and long rails. I use a 5’3” Firewire Vader – this board goes super fast on any point of sail, rips upwind, works well in both light wind and high wind, and is also relatively short, making it easy to travel with. I always ride strapless – you can use handles if you like, I just find that they get in the way of my feet!

When selecting kites, the most important criterion is that they are in excellent condition. I also recommend kites that have good range, especially if you are planning a solo trip. I fly the latest Boardriding Maui Cloud kites, and I love how versatile, nimble, and compact they are, but you can use just about any kite for your long distance journey.

Foil boards are opening a lot of doors for exploratory and long distance kiting. Foils require less physical effort for a skilled rider, and they allow you to cover ground in just about any direction, making it possible to plan long-distance routes that include upwind legs as well. The main issue with foils is that they require at least a meter or so of water depth. You absolutely do not want to crash your foil into anything hard – I’ve done it, it’s not fun, and it usually spells the end of your trip. Foils are also more likely to get tangled in flotsam or fishing nets, but that usually isn’t catastrophic. As long as you account for these factors, foils are an incredible tool for distance and for exploring. I love my Alpinefoil which, among other things, packs down very well for travel.

The Journey

For me, the journey is what long distance kiting is all about. Whether you travel solo or as part of a supported group, down the coast or crossing from island to island like Mitu did recently in Cape Verde, there is very specific and unique feeling that you get from such a journey. Spending several days on the water, traveling entirely by kite and away from the world of cars and roads – away from the land for the most part, in fact, puts you in a unique state of mind.

You may be familiar with the idea of “Flow”. Flow is a state of mind and a state of being in your body. You find yourself in flow when you are totally absorbed in what you are doing. Your perception changes, and your intuition takes over from your conscious mind. It’s common to enter a flow state during intense physical activity, and it can happen for a few minutes or a few hours at a time.

Bowen in Brazil

The magic of a journey is that you extend the flow state beyond the immediate physical rush of action. You spend days immersed in the experience, in the feeling of your body working, and in the feeling of being part of the natural world. Being in Flow feels good – it’s recreational, but it’s also challenging, restorative and inspiring. Flow is also addictive – the more time you spend in Flow, the more you realize that other things – most things, really – are a distraction.

When people ask me about kitesurfing, I often describe it as a form of sailing, and as the combination of sailing and surfing. The essence of sailing is to make a journey by the power of the wind alone, to cast off from a known port and arrive on foreign shores. Long distance kitesurfing is how we as kitesurfers can experience this pure soul of the wind – a unique way to travel, to explore, and to expand your horizons in the sport. I encourage everyone to do some long distance kiting and feel how distance is different!

I’m not totally sure that “sports” is the right word, but I can’t think of what else covers climbing, backpacking, hiking, trail running, swimming, sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and all the other things that I love to do outdoors. Perhaps I could be more specific and say “outdoor sports”, since I’m not really into football, baseball, basketball, golf and that sort of thing. But, for now anyhow: “Sports”.

We are our bodies. While we can philosophize about the universe of the mind, the mind is carried around in the meat of the brain, and the brain by the body. And: our bodies need to be active. Physical activity keeps us healthly, stimulates our senses and literally gets the blood flowing to the brain. Being active is enlightening – and usually helps to keep us lighter.

God is Nature. You might have some other idea about God also is, but it’s pretty had to argue that – if you believe in some sort of God – that God doesn’t include Nature. And if you don’t believe in “God” (I don’t), well, then, Nature is God. And, Nature is the ultimate inspiration.

Put the two together, and it becomes clear that it’s hard to beat being active, outdoors. I was lucky to have parents that introduced me to the joy of outdoor activity at a very early age, and as much as I love business, software, people and all sorts of other things, I want to spend as much time outside as possible. Nothing makes me feel more awesome than being active in nature.